Refugee Pushback Growing in Multiple States

It was standing-room only at a council meeting in semi-rural Pickens County, South Carolina, Monday night, as residents flooded the chambers, many of them interested in one topic – the potential of Syrian Muslim refugees being resettled in their county.

On Sunday in Twin Falls, Idaho, more than 100 people marched through town with signs and U.S. flags, protesting refugee resettlement in their town and demanding that a local community college shut down its resettlement office.

On Oct. 6 in Redlands, California, a woman affiliated with a local tea-party group stood up at a city council meeting and voiced her concerns about possible Muslim refugees being injected into the community from Syria.

In St. Cloud, Minnesota, a group of concerned citizens became visibly upset at a townhall last Tuesday when Gov. Mark Dayton announced that anyone who is not comfortable with that state’s growing diversity, including its expanding Somali refugee population, “should find another state” because Minnesota’s economy “cannot expand based on white, B+, native-born citizens. We don’t have enough.”